5 Things You Need to Know About the Obamacare Deadline

Attention, fellow procrastinators: Monday night, as you probably know by now, is the deadline to sign up for health insurance at HealthCare.gov, and already, that’s led to an estimated 9.5 million newly insured Americans. But if you’re anything like me, what you’re wondering about is how firm this deadline really is. Well, I’ve got great news: There’s wiggle room. Lots of it, actually. Here’s the deal, in five easy pieces:

1. You only have to start signing up by 11:59 p.m. That’s right—you don’t have to finish. Thanks to the White House’s announcement of a “special enrollment period,” you’ll have until about mid-April to complete your enrollment and still be covered as of May 1 (an official date will be decided upon once it’s clear how many slackers, in total, have yet to finish enrolling). By starting the process, or ensuring your place “in line,” you’re still good to go. The prescient idea here is to help out folks who tried to enroll on Monday but were thwarted by expected technical glitches. But even if you were only thwarted by glitches of your own, this extension is operating on the honor system, so it’s wholly up to you whether you use it or not.

2. It may even be OK even if you don't start by midnight. So yeah, as a matter of fact, even if you don’t begin the sign-up process by the time the clock strikes 12, you’ll still be allowed to apply late if you’ve experienced website errors, were the victim of “exceptional circumstances” such as an earthquake (hello, California friends), came down with a “serious medical condition,” or were stopped by one of several “planned system outages.” Other situations that could get you off the hook include having tried to sign up but ran into trouble thanks to various dreaded “error messages,” or were given misinformation by an Affordable Care Act employee.

3. Another out: applying via paper and snail mail. If, for some reason, you choose to go the old-school route and want to claim one of the myriad reasons, above, for needing more time, you’ve got until April 7 to get your paperwork in. If you’re granted the extension, you’ll then have until April 30 to choose your plan.

4. If you’re avoiding the inevitable because of cost, you might be surprised. Check out the sliding scale for federal subsidies (which are higher for those with lower incomes) here. Also, if you’re under 30 or eligible for a hardship exemption (because you’ve been evicted, gone bankrupt, or recently lost a close family member, for example) you can buy a lower-cost “catastrophic” health plan, which will protect you from high medical costs.

5. Worst-case scenario: not so awful. Nobody wants to pay for nothing, but if you truly can’t do it, you’ll be facing a possible penalty of $95 — or 1 percent of family income, whichever is higher. Still, that’s just for the first year, and it goes up annually, until hitting a tough-to-swallow $695 per person (or 2.5 percent of income) by 2016. So you’ll really want to get it together by then.